Characters in Secret Window, Secret Garden

“I have to talk to you, Abby,” he said. It was no good. It was too close to real life to be good. He had never been so hot when it came to real life. Maybe that was part of the problem.

… EPILOGUE Ted and Amy Milner came to see the man who had shot and killed Amy’s first husband, the well-known writer Morton Rainey, about three months after the events at Tashmore Lake. They had seen the man at one other time during the three-month period, at the inquest, but that …

Detective Bradley nodded. “You were hoping to prove you scooped him.” “Right. ‘Sowing Season’ was in a book of short stories I published in 1983, but it was originally published in 1980. I was hoping the guy would feel safe picking a date only a year or two before 1983.

Bruno started to bark at him, but Patty got scared and pulled him back, although she said he just about ripped the leash out of her hand. “Then the man got into the car and started it up. He turned on the headlights, and Patty said they almost blinded her.

Bump, Mort’s tomcat, had been curled up on the low cabinet built into the side of the house—you had to store your garbage in a closed compartment or the raccoons came in the night and pulled it all over hell—and now he jumped down and twined his way sinuously between …

Meantime, how about another tale? Respectfully yours, Charles Palmer Assistant Editor Mort had read this letter twice, and then began to peal hoarse bursts of laughter at the house, which was luckily empty.

8 She had suggested he call Dave Newsome, the Tashmore constable—after all, the man might be dangerous. Mort told her he didn’t think that would be necessary, at least not yet, but if “John Shooter” called by again, he would probably give Dave a jingle.

Herb’s lady-friend, Delores, picked it up on the second ring and called Herb to the telephone. “Hi, Mort,” Herb said. “What’s the story on the house?” His voice moved away from the telephone’s mouthpiece a little. “Delores, will you move that skillet to the back burner?”

It belonged to Don Bassinger, who owned a place on the far side of the lake. Bassinger, a veteran alcoholic who spent most of his time drinking up what remained of his once-substantial inheritance, often used Lake Drive as a shortcut to what was known as Bassinger Road.

Still, it seemed to ease Amy’s mind to have him there, and so Mort left it alone. Don Strick, the Consolidated Assurance Company agent with whom they had done business, conducted the meeting at his office, where they went after another brief tour of “the site.”

At the office they met a man named Fred Evans, a Consolidated field investigator specializing in arson. The reason Evans hadn’t been with Wickersham and Bradley that morning or at “the site” when Strick met them there at noon became obvious very quickly: he had spent most of the previous …

Today, he had written the following lines of deathless prose during his two-hour stint: Four days after George had confirmed to his own satisfaction that his wife was cheating on him, he confronted her. “I have to talk to you, Abby,” he said. It was no good.

“Mort Rainey!” Gerda Bowie greeted him in her usual hoarse, Bleacher Creature’s shout. She was a tall woman with masses of frizzy chestnut hair and a great rounded bosom. “Ain’t seen you in a coon’s age! Writing any good books lately?” “Trying,” Mort said.

Greg Carstairs, his caretaker, would be down early this afternoon to give him an estimate on how much it would cost to reshingle the house, for one thing, and Greg would wonder what it was.

… summer to do that little chore, but then Henry Young had called him one day in April, asking who the fellow was he’d seen Amy with at the mall—some relative, maybe?—and the suspicions which had culminated in the eerily quick and quiet no-fault divorce had begun, the shitstorm which had …

I know from Herbert Creekmore’s deposition that Mr. Rainey imagined this Shooter was hounding him over a story called ‘Sowing Season,’ and that Mr. Creekmore had a copy of the magazine in which that story appeared sent up so Mr. Rainey could prove that he had published first.

So—what now, little man? He supposed he could call Isabelle Fortin, who lived across the street, but that suddenly seemed like too much work and a pain in the ass besides. Isabelle was already so deeply into his and Amy’s breakup that she was doing everything but taking home movies.

I’m all right. It was just a dream and I’m all right. But he wasn’t. Because it hadn’t just been a dream. John Kintner had been real. How in God’s name could he have forgotten John Kintner? Mort had gone to college at Bates, and had majored in creative writing.

“You don’t think he created John Shooter …

He had to force himself out of the car, and the walk from the door of the post office to the window where Juliet Stoker stood sorting mail seemed at least a thousand miles long. When he got there, he tried to speak and no words came out.

“Okay,” Herb said with sudden decision. “I’ll call Marianne Jaffery over at EQMM. I’ve known her for a long time. If I ask her to ask the library curator—that’s what they call the guy, honest, the library curator—to send us a copy of the June, 1980, ish, she’ll do it.

Megan starts school next year, and it’ll be harder for them to get away, he’d said. So Greg had been alone. (the hat) Like Tom Greenleaf. (the car) The young husband and the old widower. (the keys) And how does it work?

Right is right and fair is fair and something has to be done.” Morton Rainey, who had just gotten up from a nap and who was still feeling only halfway into the real world, didn’t have the slightest idea what to say.

Mrs. Gavin had apparently finished upstairs; the drone of the Electrolux had finally ceased. She came in every Tuesday to clean, and she had been shocked into a silence very unlike her when Mort had told her two Tuesdays ago that he and Amy were quits.

“Then I went to see Patricia Champion, our one witness. I took a picture of a 1986 Buick—the make and model we assumed Mr. Rainey would have been driving. She said it might have been the car, but she still couldn’t be sure. So I was up against it.

The teacher was a fellow named Richard Perkins, Jr., who had written two novels which had gotten very good reviews and sold very few copies. Mort had tried one, and thought the good reviews and bad sales had the same root cause: the books were incomprehensible.

“He and Sonny Trotts were painting the Methodist Parish Hall.” “Uh-huh? Did you speak to him about my buddy?” “Yeah, I did,” Greg said. He sounded more cautious than ever. “Well?” There was a short pause. Then Greg said, “Tom thought you must have been mixed up on your days.”

Ted Milner was the real-estate agent. He still found it hard to believe she had tossed him over for a real-estate agent, and he supposed that was part of the problem, part of the conceit which had allowed things to progress to this point in the first place.

He read the first sentence, then the second, then the third, and for a few moments clear thought ceased. Todd Downey thought that a woman who would steal your love when your love was really all you had was not much of a woman. He therefore decided to kill her.

Mort heard the rumble of an approaching vehicle. They both turned in that direction, and Tom Greenleaf’s Scout came over the nearest hill, pulling a little cyclone of fallen leaves behind it.

… he had done a fair job of painting Tom Havelock’s homicidal breakdown. The editor at EQMM had agreed, and so had the readers—the story had generated favorable mail. The editor had asked for more, but Mort had never come up with another story even remotely like “Sowing Season.” “I know …

The fire chief, Wickersham, said: “The guy was pretty angry?” “Yes.” “Angry enough to have driven to Derry and torched your house?” the police detective, Bradley, asked. He was almost positive Shooter hadn’t done it, but he didn’t want to delve into his brief dealings with Shooter any more deeply.